By Rupert Howell
Batesville city officials appear ready to sever the relationship with Retail Coach, a retail business consulting company hired in February of 2014, during the second year of a three year $78,000 contract.

The board of mayor and aldermen discussed the contract with Attorney Colmon Mitchell during a work session Monday morning where Batesville Alderman Eddie Nabors led the discussion on whether the firm was living up to their contractual obligations.

Earlier this year the Batesville board approved for Nabors to go to New Orleans to Gulf South Idea Exchange, an International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), event that puts retailers, consultants and municipalities together to promote ideas, or in the municipalities’ case, put retailers together with potential sites.

Nabors said he learned prior to leaving that a Coach representative would not be present, although the contract with the city indicated that they would.

“I was a real outsider,” Nabors said of the meeting, “I was out of my element.”

He stated, “If we hadn’t approved someone to go, we would have never known they weren’t there.”

Nabors explained that his purpose in getting board approval to go was to see what and how Retail Coach was working for the city adding, “People (others in their business) were astounded they weren’t there,” He was careful to note that those “astounded” people were Retail Coach’s competitors who would like to have Batesville’s business.

Other complaints or questions arose during the discussion that cited a survey  with obviously misleading information taken from a small sampling that noted an inordinate amount of Batesville residents with bachelor or professional degrees and an inflated amount of wealth per individual— all information that could be found in latest census figures Attorney Mitchell noted.
Several aldermen questioned if other data provided might also be misleading.

Aldermen agreed for the legal department to send the consulting company a letter to show cause why the contract should not be dissolved.